As Searchlight forecast, the English Defence League did not roll over and die after its street leader Stephen Lennon quit, and we warned of the splintering of the organisation. So anti-fascists have faced a variety of small but violent far-right groups on the streets.

Added to this are the aggressive tactics of Britain First, which the authorities have countered to only a minimal extent, and the advent of the anti-Islam Pegida, a German group whose name means Patriotic Europeans against Islamisation of the West. Struggling to survive in Germany, Pegida chanced their arm in the worst possible location in the UK for them, Newcastle upon Tyne, which has a terrific record of seeing off fascists. Their visit to London turned out no better for them.

Small-scale political movements are continually developing their own literature – such as magazines, leaflets and internal bulletins for dedicated members. This is true for the extreme right too, and we can see a wide range of periodicals, pamphlets and websites promoted by various elements of this diverse movement. Another regular format for this sort of literature is books, and there has been a flurry of these related to the history as well as the ongoing aims and aspirations of the extreme right, in the past year or so.

This article offers a survey of some of the recent publications – some offered as print books online, others also readily available instantly for a few pounds as e-books – that have been developed by an eclectic range of figures within the extreme right. Along with various other features of the extreme right’s cultural universe – such as conferences – these books can be seen as forming a vital component of the ‘cultic milieu’ generated by the movement. Before looking at some examples, it is worth describing in a bit more detail what is meant by the extreme right’s ‘cultic milieu’.

At noon on Saturday 11 April under the clock at Victoria Station, better known for lovers’ trysts, a group assembled who were not lovers but serious haters. It contained leading figures from the USA, Canada and Spain, who were joined by veteran British Nazis and fascists.

From Spain came one of the most infamous postwar Nazi leaders, Pedro Varela, a man who thrived in his country during the Franco years and through his relationship with top wartime SS exiled generals, who were living in Spain because elsewhere they would have been tried for treason and war crimes.

Just over a week after the assassination of the Russian opposition politician Boris Nemtsov in Moscow on 27 February, The Sunday Times ran two articles. One was a news report about the arrest of four suspects. They were all Chechens, one a deputy to Chechnya’s State Intelligence Service chief, who is a close associate of President Ramzan Kadyrov, the man put in place by Russian President Vladimir Putin in 2007 to run the troubled Russian republic.

The second story, by Ben Judah, revealed the presence of up to 1,000 Russian informants in London, who brazenly track Russians opposed to the Kremlin and target figures in the British elite to gather intelligence about British plans or to “persuade” them into not criticising Russia. These informants, who riddle London’s 50,000-strong Russian community, are mostly recruited with financial incentives, such as payments towards the cost of studying in the UK, for medical treatment for a relative in Russia or by providing funding for a business.